Parental models and overimitation in 5-year-old children

Autor(en)
Louise Mackie, Leslie-Ann Eickhoff, Eluisa Nimpf, Ludwig Huber, Stefanie Hoehl
Abstrakt

Individuals often copy another's causally irrelevant actions despite their inefficiency toward goals. The present study investigated the influence of model familiarity on this behavior-known as "overimitation"-with a two-phase overimitation task. We tested whether 5-year-old Austrian children (

N = 52, 28 males) would overimitate their parents more than a stranger when operating a novel puzzle box. First, an inefficient strategy was demonstrated by a parent (or stranger) before the child's first turn on the box; then, an efficient strategy was demonstrated by a stranger (or parent) before the child's second turn. Results showed that children who first saw their parent's inefficient strategy overimitated it slightly more than those who saw the stranger's. After the efficient demonstration, we observed a reduction in children's overimitation of their parent's (but not the stranger's) inefficient strategy. Comparisons to a no-model (baseline) condition revealed significantly higher overimitation scores for our parent-then-stranger and stranger-then-parent conditions in the first phase, but only for the stranger-then-parent condition in the second phase. We also observed children protesting against their parents' efficient demonstration (in favor of the stranger's inefficient demonstration). These results suggest (a) that overimitation can occur in two ways (supporting a dual-process theory) and (b) that children selectively overimitate depending on model familiarity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Organisation(en)
Institut für Psychologie der Entwicklung und Bildung, Department für Verhaltens- und Kognitionsbiologie
Externe Organisation(en)
Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien
Journal
Developmental Psychology
ISSN
0012-1649
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001798
Publikationsdatum
09-2024
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
501005 Entwicklungspsychologie
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Demography, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Life-span and Life-course Studies
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/parental-models-and-overimitation-in-5yearold-children(68865381-adaf-4e83-8607-551f438422c5).html